Anti-red tape drive is delivering, says EU 

"Three years of hard work has led to the development of a new regulatory culture and is now delivering concrete, tangible results for businesses and for citizens in Europe," said EU Enterprise Commissioner Günter Verheugen on 30 January. 

According to the progress report he presented, a first package of "fast-track actions" adopted a year ago (EurActiv 25/01/07), which focused on reducing information obligations and paperwork in areas including company law, statistics, agriculture and transport, has already allowed companies to cut their compliance costs by €500 million.

A further €800 million in savings is expected to follow shortly, as further measures start taking effect this year, stated the report: "For example, more than 600,000 public limited liability companies will no longer have to order costly expert reports concerning the draft terms of mergers or divisions of small enterprises and more than 300,000 freight carriers will no longer have to carry separate transport documents." 

A second package of fast-track actions should be established later this year, with the help of the newly established "High-Level Group on Administrative Burdens" chaired by Edmund Stoiber, the Commission said (EurActiv 17/09/07). 

On top of this, the EU will continue screening legislative acts to identify opportunities for simplification, through the elimination, reformulation or codification of existing legislation. Since October 2005, 91 of the planned 164 simplification initiatives have been adopted, allowing roughly 5,000 of the 95,000 pages of EU law to be scrapped, said Verheugen. 

"Tremendous economic benefits" will stem from this simplification programme, he claimed, pointing to the development of the "Single European Payment Area", which began as part of the drive to improve regulation and could save the EU economy as much as €28 billion annually. The new electronic Customs Code is also expected to boost international trade and save businesses up to €2.5 billion per year, he added. 

But business leaders responded by saying progress on simplification and cutting administrative burdens by 25% by 2012 is "still too slow", notably due to "complicated legislative procedures" in the Council and European Parliament. "Substantial progress on better regulation has been made in a relatively short period of time but the Council and European Parliament should do more to deliver concrete results for European companies," said Ernest-Antoine Seillière, President of the European employers' association BusinessEurope.